Christine de Pizan

Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Joan Palmer Carlile (buried 27 February 1679)

Not much is known about the life of Joan Palmer, who was the daughter of William Palmer, an official of the royal parks of St. James's and Spring Gardens (under James I), and his wife, a woman named Mary.

Joan was likely born about the year 1606, and in 1626 she married the poet and playwright Lodowick Carlile (sometimes "Carlell") who was, like her father, an official in the Royal Parks system, in his case keeper of the Great Forest in Richmond Park. He was also a courtier: gentleman of the bows for Charles I and a groom to the king and queen's privy chamber.

The Stag Hunt, by Joan Palmer Carlile--
Carlile, her husband, and two children (left)
are painted along with the family of Sir Justinian Isham,
in Richmond Park

While she had no formal training--or, at least, we do not know how she acquired the rudiments of painting technique--Carlile soon distinguished herself as an amateur painter.

Her work came somehow to the attention of King Charles I, and she seems to have begun her professional life as an artist by copying original Italian paintings and reproducing them as miniatures.

She and her "mentor," Sir Anthony Van Dyck, who must have provided her with some kind of encouragement, if not instruction, are known to have received an impressive gift from the king of ultramarine paint, said to be valued at £500.

While she may have begun as an untrained amateur copying the original work of others, in the early 1650s Carlile and her husband relocated from Richmond to Covent Garden, which was then a center of artistic production. (It is likely that Lodowick Carlile may have suffered loss of income during the civil wars and Commonwealth.)

In her recent essay on the artist, Jane Eade quotes from contemporary letters that suggest Joan Carlile was in need of money and attempting to earn a living through her painting: she "means to make use of her skill to some more advantage than hitherto she hath done," observes one friend of the Carliles, who also notes, in a subsequent letter that Carlile is hoping "to raise up some fortune for herself and children." According to the letter writer, she is "resolved there to use her skill for something more than empty fame."

Unfortunately, Carlile does not seem to have been entirely successful in earning enough to support her family, but she did earn some measure of recognition for herself as an artist. In his 1658 work on contemporary artists, Graphice, Or the Most Excellent Art of Painting, Sir William Sanderson wrote briefly about Carlile. In a list of English "modern masters" whom he judged to be "not less worthy of fame" than any "foreign" painters, Sanderson included "that worthy artist, Mrs. Carlile," noting her excellence in "oil colors."

She produced a number of portraits which seem to have been influenced by Van Dyck's court paintings. A relatively small number of these paintings, are now identified as work by Carlile, including a portrait of Lady Dorothy Browne and her husband, Sir Thomas Browne, now in the National Portrait Gallery; a portrait of Elizabeth Murray, countess of Dysart and duchess of Lauderdale, in Thirlestane Castle; a portrait of Elizabeth Murray, countess of Dysart, with her husband (her first husband) and her sister, Margaret Murray, lady Maynard, National Trust, Ham House; and The Stag Hunt (reproduced above), Lamport Hall. (To view and learn more, I'll link you to the Art UK website here.)

In 2016, the Tate Britain acquired Portrait of an Unknown Lady. When this painting was first offered for sale at auction in 2014, it was assumed to be the work of a male artist and offered as such, but art historian Bendor Grosvenor (one of my current crushes--who doesn't love a smart, diffident, quietly funny man?) recognized the painting as Carlile's work: "When it was listed for auction the painting was thought to have been by a bloke, but I recognised it as Carlile's from the sale notice as her style is quite recognisable if you know what it looks like." (For The Telegraph's article on the acquisition of Carlile's work by the Tate, click here.)

Carlile is now recognized as the "first professional female painter" in England. (See Grosvenor's article on Carlile in Art History News, for example.)

In her will, Carlile refers to other works, now lost (or unrecognized as hers): "the princess in white satin" (which may be a version of the Portrait of an Unknown Lady--the unknown woman in the painting is wearing a dress of what looks like white satin) and "the little St. Katherine and the Mercury." So there may be more works emerging at some point. We can dream . . .

The most accessible information for Carlile comes from the Historical Dictionary of British Women; you can access the entry by clicking here.

Update, 8 January 2019): I am very grateful to Jane Eade, Curator of the National Trust, London, for making available a copy of her "Rediscovering the 'worthy artiste Mrs. Carlile,'" The National Trust Historic Houses & Collections Annual 2018, ed. Christopher Rowell (2018): 19-24. Her information about Carlile's efforts to earn a living through her art are most welcome--as is her careful comparison of several portraits of sitters wearing that same white satin dress!

One of Joan Carlile's miniatures (attributed),
possibly a portrait of Barbara Villiers,
recently auctioned by Christie's

Friday, February 23, 2018

Milburgha of Wenlock (died 23 February 715)

Milburgha (or Mildburh) of Wenlock was the daughter of Merwald (or Merewalh), a minor king in Mercia, one of the seven kingdoms in Anglo-Saxon Britain, and of his wife, "Domina Aebbe" (Lady Aebbe)--according to legend, Queen Aebbe was the granddaughter of Eadbald, king of Kent from 616 to 640.

An imagined portrait of Milburgha of Wenlock,
painted in the seventeenth century by
Juan de Roelas

Milburga's mother was one of three sisters who became saints--she is most frequently referred to as St. Ermenburga, although this seems to be the name of her sister . . .

The three sisters--Milburga's mother and two aunts--are St. Ermenburga (more properly St. Aebbe), perhaps the founder of a double Benedictine abbey in Thanet;* St. Ermengitha, who served as a nun in the abbey at Thanet; and St. Etheldreda of Kent (there's another, earlier and much better known St. Etheldreda as well, but she's not this one).

As for Milburga, she was also one of three sisters, the eldest of the daughters born to Merwald and Aebbe--like her mother and her two sisters, Milburga and her two sisters were dedicated to the religious life, and all three became saints.

As her story goes, Milburgha was much sought after as a wife by a neighboring prince--and he refused to take no for an answer. Resorting to violence, he attempted to take the young woman by force, but she fled from him and his invading army. She managed to cross a river, and her pursuer was foiled when the river became impassable.

After her fortunate escape, she seems to have been in France, where she was educated at Chelles Abbey, a Benedictine double monastery near Paris.

According to at least one account of Milburgha's life, she returned to England and founded the nunnery of Wenlock (now Much Wenlock), with the assistance of endowments provided by her uncle, the king of Mercia, and by her father. But other sources offer different information--that Milburgha did become a nun at Wenlock, but that the double monastery had been founded by her father and Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury and was, at the time of her entry, headed by a French abbess, Liobinde of Chelles. In this account, Milburgha succeeded her predecessor as head of the monastery. (On its web page, the village of Stoke-St. Milborough offers several versions of Milburgha's origins, the incident with the would-be husband, and her entrance into the religous life--to access it and its four "versions" of her story, click here.)

The convent flourished under Milburgha, not least because of her remarkable power over birds--she could keep them from damaging crops. Noted for her humility, Milburgha was also credited with restoring sight to the blind and with the gift of healing.

Milburgha died on 23 February 715. Milburgha's Wenlock was destroyed by the Danes, but the site was rebuilt in the twelfth century by Cluniac monks, who also believed that they had located Milburgha's bones--they established their rebuilt monastery as a pilgrimage site.

The ruins of Wenlock are of the later Cluniac Abbey, built on the site
of Milburgha's Wenlock, destroyed by the Danes.

As for Milburgha's sisters: Saint Mildred (or Mildred) became abbess of Thanet, her mother's abbey, while Saint Mildgith seems to have first entered the religious life in a monastery in Kent before succeeding Mildred as abbess of Thanet.

*According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, a double monastery is a religious institution

comprising communities of both men and women, dwelling in contiguous establishments, united under the rule of one superior, and using one church in common for their liturgical offices. The reason for such an arrangement was that the spiritual needs of the nuns might be attended to by the priests of the male community, who were associated with them more closely than would have been possible in the case of entirely separate and independent monasteries.

This form of monastic foundation was frequently seen in Anglo-Saxon England, where the institutions of monks and nuns were governed by abbesses, such as the renowned Hilda of Whitby.

Thursday, February 15, 2018

Back to the Future, Part 8: Another School Shooting

Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Feminist, Environmentalist, Writer

It seems cruelly ironic that the latest mass killing in America happened at a school named for Marjory Stoneman Douglas, who dedicated herself to improving lives.

Cruel and ironic, but then, what do we expect?

Marjory Stoneman Douglas,
Photo credit: Friends of the Everglades

The shooting spree at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School occurred on day 45 of the year 2018--day 45 of the new year, Valentine's Day, in fact, but already the 18th school shooting of the year.

In other words, during 2018, we have experienced one school shooting every 60 hours. Put in still other terms, we have a school shooting every 2.5 days.

And that's "only" counting school shootings. There have already been 30 mass shootings in 2018.

And we are only in the 7th week of the year.

For this year's statistics, check out the Gun Violence Archive--there have been 6,621 "incidents" involving gun violence this year in the United States, resulting in 1,835 deaths. On Day 45 of 2018.

I've written before about gun violence on this blog, many times, in fact. (I'm linking here only to the most recent post, from last November, on the occasion of, what else, a mass shooting.)

But today, instead of focusing on young, angry, white men, often with ties to white nationalism, who commit the majority of these atrocities, I thought I'd focus instead on some other aspect of their crimes.

In this case, as news reports unspooled online and on the television screen, I wondered about the woman for whom Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was named. Who was she, I asked myself

Was that just avoidance? If so, the time I spent answering my question was not time ill-spent.

Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on 7 April 1890, Marjory Stoneman would later recall an incident from her early childhood that was a sign of the course her life would take. She said that when she was five years old, her father read Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha to her. When Hiawatha commanded a birch tree to give him its bark so that he could make a canoe, she broke into "loud sobs," asking her father "why should the birch tree have to give up his bark just because Hiawatha wanted to build a canoe?"

"I couldn't stand it," she said. (I also love her reflections on her lost childhood copy of Alice in Wonderland: "Some fiend in human form must have borrowed it and not brought it back.") Reflecting on her memory about Hiawatha, she later concluded that it was her "first really independent thought."

Stoneman's parents divorced not long after. her father moving to Florida while Stoneman and her mother headed to Taunton, Massachusetts, where they would live with her mother's family.

Life with her mother's family was difficult--her mother's mental health was unstable, and the family criticized Stoneman's father for his unsuccessful business ventures. About this period in her childhood, Stoneman concluded that the "dislocation" of her life "made me something of a skeptic and a dissenter."

But she loved her education, begun at Barnam Street Elementary. Stoneman noted that, because employment opportunities were so limited for women in the 1890s, she had excellent (female) teachers and instruction. "There wasn't much that literate women could do except teach school," she observed, "maybe that accounted for the wonderful teaching we had."

By the age of sixteen, she had also begun her writing career, receiving a Gold Badge from St. Nicholas Magazine for her contribution in the category of "puzzle-making." Her puzzle was, as she described it, "Double the Headings and Curtailings."

Just six months later, in June 1907, she was awarded a junior writing prize by the Boston Herald for her short story, "An Early Morning Paddle," about a young boy on a camping trip who paddles out to the middle of a late one morning in order to watch the sun rise.

By 1908, Stoneman had graduated high school and enrolled in Wellesley College, where she would major in English. She graduated four years later, in 1912, the same year as her mother's death. Although she had a college degree, Stoneman found that there were still few employment opportunities for the educated woman, and so she enrolled in a training program that would qualify her to teach salesgirls and do a bit of "personnel work."

She finished the course, which enabled her to take a job at a department store in St. Louis, where her job was "to make out sales slips and to teach the cash girls some grammar." If one of these "girls" ran into trouble, Stoneman was also supposed "to straighten her out."

After a few months, she moved on to Bamberger's department store in Newark, where she became the "educational director"--though, as she notes, "why department stores had educational directors I never really understood."

Lonely and drifting aimlessly, Stoneman met Kenneth Douglas, a tall, thin, good-looking man who was an "ordinary dresser with good manners"--as she describes him--and thirty years older than she was. Within three months of their first meeting, on 18 April 1914, they were married.

Marjory Stoneman, now Marjory Stoneman Douglas, does not shy away from telling about her disastrous marriage in her autobiographical Voice of the River, which I've quoted from here. Kenneth Douglas proved to be both a conman and a fraud (and possibly a bigamist)--by the fall of 1915, Marjory was persuaded to divorce him, and she moved to Miami, Florida, reunited with her father, whom she had not seen since her childhood.

In Florida, Stoneman Douglas joined the staff of her father's newspaper. Frank Stoneman had gone to work for The Miami Evening Post, which had been purchasedin 1910 and renamed the Miami Herald. Stoneman Douglas began her career in journalism as a society columnist, but soon her life changed once more.

In 1917, the Herald arranged for Stoneman Douglas to meet and write a story about the first Florida woman to enlist in the U. S. Naval Reserve. Although the woman never showed up for her interview (or her enlistment), Stoneman Douglas still got the story, reporting to the Herald, "I got the story on the first woman to enlist. It turned out to be me."

Stoneman Douglas served during from 1917 to 1918, but, not finding the routine much to her liking, she volunteered to serve in the American Red Cross. In her work in Europe, she traveled to France, England, Italy, Belgium, and the Balkans, reporting on conditions for war refugees.

When she finally returned to Miami, she again joined the Herald, where she had a column from 1920 to 1923. But then she quit the paper--she worked as a freelance reporter from 1923 until 1990, an astonishingly long career. (Stoneman Douglas did not die until 1998, at the age of 108!!)

In addition to her writing, Marjory Stoneman Douglas became an activist. Proud of her family's abolitionist ties (she was related to the anti-slavery Coffin family), she was a charter member of the first chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union in the American south, and she worked to improve living conditions in racially segregated Coconut Grove.

She was a supporter of the women's suffrage movement and of the Equal Rights Amendment. She was also a supporter of the Florida Rural Legal Services group, whose aim was protecting migrant laborers.

Stoneman Douglas is best known today for her environmental work on behalf of the Florida Everglades, joining the fight to preserve the Everglades as a national park. In 1947, she published The Everglades: River of Grass, a work that "significantly impacted the environmental history of Florida by redefining the Everglades as a source of free flowing fresh water essential to both the people and wildlife of the region."

First edition cover, 1947

In her lifetime, Marjory Stoneman Douglas published news articles and editorials, short stories, a play, and non-fiction environmental writing. Works by and about her are available at the Internet Archive. A useful bibliography is available at the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas: Writer and Conservationist website; you will find it by clicking here. This website also offers an incredible digital archive of Stoneman Douglas's papers, including book manuscripts, correspondence, photographs, diaries, newspaper articles, photographs, and correspondence.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas is also a subject in Ken Burns's documentary series The National Parks: America's Best Idea. You can access a companion biographical essay, with links, by clicking here.

I've learned a lot in these last few hours by reading about the life and work of Marjory Stoneman Douglas.

Unfortunately, when you Google her name, what now comes up is link after link to a horrible mass shooting in Parkland, Florida.

Many lives have been lost in yet another senseless tragedy--including that of Marjory Stoneman Douglas.

Wednesday, February 7, 2018

Alfonsina Orsini, regent of Florence (died 7 February 1520)

Born in 1472, the daughter of Roberto Orsini and Catherine Sanseverino, Alfonsina Orsini was raised at the court of Ferrante of Naples (her father, who died of plague in 1479, served as a captain in Ferrante's army, and his daughter was named after Ferrante's father and his son, both named Alfonso). The year of Alfonsina's birth is calculated based on a reference in a diplomatic letter to Lorenzo de'Medici from Naples, which describes her as having "more than fourteen years."

She married to Piero di Lorenzo de' Medici, the eldest son of Lorenzo "il magnifico" ("the Magnificent")--though Piero was known by a much less happy honorific than his father--he was known as Piero "the Unfortunate"!

A Botticelli portrait believe to represent

Alfonsina Orsini

Political motives--and the potential for a huge dowry--lay behind the Medici negotiations for Alfonsina's marriage to the son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, who hoped to strengthen his ties with Naples and with the powerful Orsini family, one of the most influential in Rome.

But Alfonsina and her future husband were related--Piero's mother was Clarice Orsini. Thus Alfonsino and her future mother-in-law were both Orsinis, though each belonged to a different "branch" of that family.*

Not only were Piero's mother and his bride both members of the large Orsini family, with its many lines of descent, but his grandmother, Maddalena Orsini, was the sister of Alfonsina's father. (Not to mention the fact that Maddalena and her husband, Jacopo Orsini, were cousins . . . Family values and "traditional marriage"!!! Yikes!)

And so Piero and Alfonsina needed a papal dispensation in order to ensure the validity of their marriage. And a papal dispensation, granted by Innocent VIII, was received.

Although Alfonsina and Piero's marriage, by proxy, took place in 1486, the two did not meet and begin their married life together until 1488, when they celebrated a lavish wedding in Rome in February before making their way to Florence, where Alfonsina arrived in May.

For the first years of her married life, Alfonsina performed her duties as a wife, giving birth to two children, a daughter, Clarice (b. 1489), and a son, Lorenzo (b. 1492), both named for Piero's parents, Lorenzo and Clarice (Orsini). Alfonsina may also have given birth to third child, Luisa (b. 1494), but there are no further references to her.

In addition to bearing children, Alfonsina, like other women in her marital family and of her social status, was a patron of religious charities and institutions, a patron of the arts, and an intercessor for those who appealed to her to with their requests for aid, for jobs, and for legal assistance.

Alfonsina's father-in-law, Lorenzo, died in 1492; it was after Lorenzo's death that Alfonsina's husband, who had been raised to become not only the head of the Medici family but also to follow his father as the de facto ruler of Florence, became "the unfortunate."

A fifteenth- or sixteenth-century medal
in honor of Alfonsina Orsini

Unsuited to the role skillfully managed by his father, Piero was soon overwhelmed by events. After Charles VIII of France invaded Italy, Piero proved unequal to the political and military challenges to the Florentine state. Piero and other male members of the Medici family were banned from the city in 1494.

Despite a public revolt that resulted in the looting of the Medici palace, Alfonsina remained behind in Florence, attempting not only to defend Medici interests but her own. Her dowry had been seized as part of Medici assets.

In this crisis, Alfonsino's mother, Catherine Sanseverino, proved to be a crucial supporter. A contemporary chronicler describes her as "a woman of authority and management ability." Historian Natalie Tomas writes that "it may well have been Caterina di Sanseverino who took the lead with Alfonsina learning by example from this Neapolitan noblewoman who was politically experienced and astute."

The negotiations were ultimately a success, at least as far as Alfonsina's proclamation as a rebel, along with the Medici men, was concerned--the French king, Charles VIII, compelled the new government in Florence to allow Alfonsina to remain in the city.

However, her continued efforts to regain her assets resulted in growing condemnation by both the government and citizens of Florence, who saw her maneuvering negatively, not on behalf of her husband and children, but on her own behalf. She was condemned for greed and corruption.

In May of 1495, Alfonsina applied to the new government of the city for permission to leave Florence and go to Rome, but her appeal was denied. Months later, she left the city without permission, joining her husband in Siena. (Her mother remained in Florence, where she died in 1497.)

After Piero's death in 1503, Alfonsina's fortunes reversed themselves. She relocated to Rome and worked to rebuild support for the Medici family, then returned to Florence, though briefly, in 1507, so that she could reclaim her financial assets and negotiate for her daughter's marriage. With the assistance of her sister-in-law, Lucrezia de' Medici Salviati, an alliance with Jacopo Strozzi was arranged, bringing this family's political influence to her side in her negotiations with Florence.

In 1510, she was finally successful in recovering her dowry. As long as she remained in Rome, she was deeply involved in papal politics, always with the aim of improving the chances of her return to Florence and her son's return to some kind of authority in the city.

In 1512 the Medici were allowed to return to the city, where Giuliano, third son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, assumed power, and in 1513, Giovanni de' Medici, second son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, became pope. In 1515, Alfonsina herself was able to return to Florence to live, some nineteen years after she had left.

Official documents show Alfonsina's success in influencing matters of state after her return to the city: marginal comments indicate, for example, "by the commission of the illustrious lady Alfonsina," "on order of Madonna Alfonsina," and "by order of Magnificent Lady Alfonsina."

When Giuliano died, Alfonsina's son, Lorenzo, was at last able to assume leadership, though with her son away from the city, leading Florentine troops, Alfonsina "in effect, 'ruled' in her son's stead." Of her actions at this time, her son-in-law noted, "She is always busy writing to Rome . . . or giving a hearing, which means that the house is always full, and from these visitors [she] has brought respect to the state, encouraged friends, and aroused fear in [the state's] enemies. She performs this office well, which would be impossible for another woman and easy for only a very few men."

As she governed Florence on behalf of her son, Alfonsina issued orders on matters of politics, the treatment of crime and criminals, taxation, property, and foreign affairs. She was also involved in many building projects in Florence as well as in Rome.

Alfonsina's influence did not diminish after her son's return to Florence. There, in 1518, she was successful in arranging Lorenzo's marriage to Maddalena de la Tour d'Auvergne. Maddalena gave brith to a daughter, on 13 April 1519. She died just two weeks later, on 28 April. Lorenzo would not live much longer--he died on 4 May, just days after his wife and less than a month after his daughter was born.

After her son's death, Alfonsina could not, as a woman, inherit any power in Florence. Shortly after her son's death, she returned to Rome, but increasingly weak, she died on 7 February 1520. She was buried in the Basilica of Santa Maria del Popolo.

The façade of the Basilica of
Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome

Her granddaughter had been in Alfonsina's care after the death of Maddalena and Lorenzo. After Alfonsina's death, the child was placed in the care of Alfonsina's daughter, Clarice de' Medici Strozzi. She would remain there, protected by the influence of Clement VII, a Medici pope.

In 1533, Alfonsina's granddaughter, Catherine de' Medici, was married to Henry, the second son of the French king. She would become queen and regent of France.

*Clarice (Orsini) de' Medici was a member of the branch descending from Rinaldo Orsini (the di Monterotondo line), Alfonsina (Orsini) de' Medici, a member of the branch descending from Roberto Orsini (the Conti di Pacentro e Oppido line). For detailed information about the branches of the Orsini familyh, click here.